Australia

So i am on vacation in Australia out to see my parents and hang out for a few weeks. One of the joys of online poker is you can travel anywhere in the world and if the internet is available you can continue to work. This gives me the freedom to stay home in California, visit parents in Australia or visit my brothers in England and still play poker.

Also the timezone is 17.5 hours ahead of California (or 5.5 hours behind but the next day) so when I login to play it is possible I will be playing different players. One could argue that more online pros live on the west coast of California than anywhere else so when you play during the day in California you are playing pro grinders a lot - this is much tougher opposition than playing against the night-time warriors who login after their day job is finished. So maybe while i am in Oz I will play against weaker players just because of the time difference.

And so it seems. I have been playing a lot of 45 seater $11 and $26 tournaments recently and I just had a little spell where I final tabled 6 tourneys in a row. Normally I will final table one or two and then have a couple of 15/16/17th type finishes. But not this week. Six in a row leading to a decent profit to help makeup for my losses on the FTOPS entries.

My plan is to keep playing these 45 seaters for a little while to boost my bankroll. The nice thing about these tournaments is they do not last long (normally 75 mins or so) which means I have maximum flexibility to still go out over here and visit people.

It will be interesting to see if I can get back on track with my $100 per day target after the October shortfall (because of WCOOP) and the problems last week (because of FTOPS).  I will post an update here for November when the totals are in.

FTOPS

So Full tilts FTOPS series is here and its a chance to win some serious money. 

I entered satellites to win an entry into FTOPS #1 for $191 instead of $220 so I was ahead before it started. Just prior I had placed first in 2 smaller tournaments and was also going pretty deep in most tournaments I entered so my confidence was high. 

There were 5124 starters and 492 got paid with 1st place getting $170,000 or so. Anyone in the last 27 got really good money. That was my target. But alas, it was not to be. I came 1184th place and went out in a bad way. My stack was getting lower (about 12 BB) and I was card dead for a while and then picked up AJs. I decided a double up at this point would give me a chance to make a decent run for the money so I pushed and was called by a player with 2-2. The flop came A, 8, Q so it was looking good but the turn and river combined to give the guys with 2-2 a backdoor flush. And I was out......no money, no glory!  

As ever I always think about the big tourneys after and doubt my moves. I had enough chips to wait longer for a premium hand (AJ suited is not really premium) but the longer I waited the smaller my stack would get and the less effective a double up would be. This is a little bit of Snyders philosophy I still think is good - its better to double up earlier so you can change 12BB to 24BB instead of later when you change 6BB to 12BB and are still low and need yet another double up.  So I went for it. And missed. No problem - I think it was an ok move.

So to the next FTOPS. Generally I only keep a few hundred dollars in my poker account and withdraw the rest so I decided to satellite into FTOPS #9. Well this did not work and I lost about $200 trying and just going out with bad luck (AA, KK - that kind of thing). Finally I had to decide whether to put enough money into my account just to buy in to the FTOPS - after much agonizing this is what I did. So FTOPS #9 - this cost $322 to buyin and had 5370 entries. Again the top prize was massive - $270,000 to the winner. The top 27 spots all paid well so again this was my target.

I played much better in this tournament again expecting to go deep. I was keeping above average right up to the money bubble. Then I played like a scared chicken. Maybe it was because I bought in with new money or maybe because I lost the satellites but I wanted to make the money. I remembered TJ Cloutiers advice which is he first plays to make the money and THEN plays to win the tournament. I also remembered the advice of every good player and good book on poker that says the bubble is the time to gamble, to pick up chips from everyone who is scared of not making the money - this is when REAL players get going.  So even remembering all this I wanted to make the money damn it. I folded and folded and played slowly and advertised to everyone else I was a scared chicken to be bullied. Even when I picked up a couple of hands (AQ, 88, AK) I just folded them like a wimp.

Hey hey hey - I made the money. After making the money and patting myself on the back I waited for all the immediate post-bubble stuff to happen. This is where all the scared chickens start pushing all-in with some gamble because now they've made the money the pressure is off and they do not care if they go out. I know all this - I've read about it, I've seen it - heck I've exploited it in most tournaments I play. But not today - today I wanted for a while, then got KQ and decided to push all in just like all the other scared chickens. I got called by AA and that was that. I won $418 - yes I paid $322 to enter, played for 5 hours and 10 mins and WON $418. So my profit of $96 did not even cover the cost of the satellites I entered. 

So maybe in reading this you can sense my frustration. If I had pushed pre-bubble with AQ, 88 or AK and lost I might have gone out with no money but at least I would have the pride of knowing I played the right way. Instead I have earned the right to say I cashed in one of the big FTOPS tournaments..............by playing like a scared chicken.

So thats my FTOPS experience so far. I feel  lost one tournament (did not cash) by playing well and making (arguably) a good move at the right time, and I cashed in another tournament by playing terrible (like a scared chicken)  around the bubble. 

October results

I started October with a visit to Las Vegas so did not play too much online poker.  In Vegas I came out about even with one decent cash in tournament play and some cash game winnings (against drunk tourists mind you). I was disappointed in the trip because I thought I would be a winner. My expectations were way above my results.

My online results this month were up and down. I hardly played from October 1st to October 10th due the the Vegas trip and ended up with a $17 profit.  I played a bit more when I returned from Vegas and I was up to just under $800 profit on the 19th. But then I went for broke on Sunday 20th with entries into some big buy-in tournaments. I ended a decent loser on the 20th losing almost half my profit. I finished the 10th to 20th  period with a total profit of $432.  This sent me on a downward spiral - between the 20th and 26th I lost all my monthly profit and went into the red. I was still in the red on the 30th but then had a very good 31st to bring me back to a small profit.  The final profit for the month was $58. This is about $1.50 per day and only $3042 less than my monthly target of $100 per day.

Notable results:

->Oct 10th - $55 freezeout - I came 35th out of 1818 runners and won $173. 

->Oct 13th - $28 freezeout - I came 2nd out of 225 runners and won $984.

->Oct 16th - $55 freezeout - I came 82nd out of 1729 runners and won $130.

->Oct 19th - $109 freezeout - I came 63rd out of 1079 runners and won $236.

->Oct 22nd - $4 Sit n Go - I came 9th out of 180 runners winning $12

->Oct 26th - $55 freezeout - I came 88th out of 1854 runners and won $139

->Oct 31st - $26 Sit n Go - I came 2nd out of 45 runners winning $270

Monthly review

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So what went wrong this month. I think there were 2 main issues:

1.  "Snyder".  his book made me think about playing a totally different way. I think I overplayed his methods during the middle of the month and had to stop myself by going back to my prior strategy. Now I am slowly incorporating his methods into my overall game.

2. Large tournaments - success in $5, $10, $20  tournaments do not come anywhere close to matching the payouts in the $55, $55 rebuy, $109 and $109 rebuy tournaments. This is where the big boys play and I decided this month to join in. On Pokerstars  I played nine $55 tournaments,  one $55 rebuy, three $109 tournaments and one $109 rebuy.  I paid $1200  to enter these tournaments and won $678. That's quite a loss. For now I am going back down in stakes where I have been more successful.

So how am I feeling. Surprisingly good.  Although I am way below target I have just posted another profitable month. Also I made quite a comeback towards the end of the month by playing fundamentally sound poker. If I can continue playing this way, I hope I will have a decent profit in November.